Students Engaged in Academic Leadership (SEAL) Cultivates Academic Success, Professional Development

June 12, 2014

SEALHasudin Pehratovic ’15 (BUS) says that the SEAL program has taught him to, “Never take anything for granted and always give back.” And if that’s not enough, the accounting major adds that the program has helped him with everything from questions of dining etiquette—’The bread plate goes on the upper left, the water glass on the upper right,’ he says with a smile—to introducing him to key UConn faculty and administrators as he explores career opportunities in his chosen field.

Pehratovic, who was born in Bosnia and came to Connecticut with his family in 2000, is one of 21 juniors and 13 sophomores who make up the first two cohorts enrolled in Students Engaged in Academic Leadership (SEAL), developed through UConn’s Office of Diversity.

Aimed at students who are the first in their families to attend college, admission to SEAL is through a competitive application process offered to first semester sophomores. Those accepted stay in the program from the second semester of their sophomore year through their senior year providing they maintain GPA requirements and are actively engaged in required activities. During this time, they receive stipends of approximately $500 per semester as they are exposed to networking and mentoring opportunities, internships, and organized team-building exercises.

Jeffrey Ogbar, vice provost for diversity, explains the genesis of the program at UConn this way: “The University does a great job of providing support for various groups of students: The Honors Program, Leadership Legacy through the Office of Student Activities, opportunities such as Upward Bound, Upward Bound-STEM, and McNair Scholars, that are federally-sponsored initiatives for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. We reach out to a wide variety of students.”

“But we found we were missing an important group – and that’s students who are the first in their families to attend college. This group, which we refer to informally as First Gen, has a disproportionately high dropout rate, particularly between their sophomore and junior years. We wanted to do something positive to reverse that trend.”

Ogbar explains that this is not a situation unique to UConn. Although overall our graduation rates are significantly better than the national average—with an 83% six year retention rate—on a national level only 26% of First Gen students graduate with a bachelor’s degree within eight years.

Reasons given for a high attrition rate include the fact that these individuals may lack a support system that includes parents who have experienced college and who support the idea of higher education. These students tend to be older with additional work and family responsibilities. And in some cases they come from a lower socio-economic status which makes paying for higher education more difficult.

“UConn’s SEAL program is aimed exclusively at first generation college students regardless of their race, ethnicity, or economic status,” says Ogbar. “As long as applicants have a GPA of at least 2.5 and are committed to developing their leadership and academic skills, they are welcome to apply.”

Kelly Sanchez ’15 (CLAS) and Shantel Honeyghan ’15 (CLAS), both members of the first cohort chosen last year, agree with Pehratovic that SEAL has provided a variety of important opportunities.

A native of Jamaica who lives in Hartford, Honeyghan was first introduced to UConn through the Teacher Preparatory Studies Program at Bulkeley High School. This initiative, which partners high schools with the Neag School of Education, is designed to encourage talented students, particularly from minority groups, to become teachers.

She says, “When I first came to UConn I thought I wanted to major in education because I had so many positive experiences with faculty from Neag when I was in high school. But, somehow I wasn’t confident in my choice. I took a close look at myself and evaluated my interests and now I have a double major in English and Human Development & Family Studies. I’ve decided that I want to get a master’s degree—and eventually a Ph.D.—in higher education and student affairs.

“Part of my decision is the example set by Dr. Ogbar, by Dr. Price in the African-American Cultural Center, and by others I’ve met through SEAL and my exposure to leadership activities. Diversity and multi-culturalism are very important to me and I hope I can give back by eventually working in an office of diversity initiatives or an office of civic engagement.”

Like her peers in the program, Sanchez who hails from New Haven, gives SEAL high marks for exposing her to leadership opportunities and introducing her to individuals on campus who serve as mentors and role models.

“I knew from the time I was in high school that I wanted to major in psychology and when I went for my interview [for the SEAL program] I met Michelle Williams and she has been a wonderful mentor for me – being there when I need her and encouraging me to every step of the way. What I didn’t anticipate was how much I would be inspired by Professor [Guillermo] Irizarry‘s course in Puerto Rican & Latin American studies. As a result, I now have a double major in Psychology and Latin American Studies and I hope, someday, to work as a clinical psychologist.

Williams, associate vice president for research and associate professor in the Department of Psychology, and Irizarry, associate professor of Literatures, Cultures & Language, are examples of the types of relationships forged between students and campus leaders envisioned by Ogbar and SEAL program administrator Seanice DeShields, director of diversity initiatives in the School of Business.

“We’re really encouraged by the progress of this program,” says DeShields. “We have only lost one student so far—and that’s because of a transfer to another school—and the collective GPA of students in the program is over 3.3 and on the rise. We’re really excited about the future and the number of First Gen students who will be graduating from UConn in years to come.”

SEAL is currently funded by a five-year grant from the Coca-Cola Foundation.

Pictured: Jeffrey Ogbar, vice provost for diversity, left, Shantel Honeyghan ’15 (CLAS), and Hasudin Pehratovic ’15 (BUS). (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

IBM Partners with UConn, Other Institutions to Prepare Students for Big Data Jobs

IBM

4.4 million jobs will be created worldwide to support big data by 2015, according to a Gartner press release on key issues facing the IT industry.

To prepare students for big data careers, the UConn School of Business offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in business analytics that focus on data management, analytics, and using emerging technologies to better manage financial risk and other business needs.Continue Reading

2014 Outstanding Ph.D. Student Scholar Award

June 11, 2014

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2014 UConn School of Business Outstanding Ph.D. Program-wide Student Scholar Award.

The purpose of the program-wide award is to recognize a Ph.D. Student Scholar in the School of Business, regardless of stage in the doctoral program, for outstanding scholarly performance.

The award is determined by department nomination and vote by the department faculty coordinators and academic director.

From a group of highly-deserving doctoral student nominations from each department, the recipient of the 2014 Program-wide Outstanding Ph.D. Student Scholar Award is:

Management – Margaret Luciano

Luciano will be entering her fifth year in the Management concentration of the doctoral program in Fall 2014 at the dissertation phase.

Please join us in congratulating Margaret for her scholarly excellence.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey to Headline Auriemma UConn Leadership Conf.

June 2, 2014

Martin DempseyStorrs, Conn.  – The nation’s highest-ranking military officer will deliver the keynote address at this year’s Geno Auriemma UConn Leadership Conference, Oct. 22 to 23 at the Mohegan Sun Convention Center in Uncasville, Connecticut.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey is scheduled to address conference attendees on the first day of the event. Coming on the heels of Geno Auriemma‘s 9th NCAA National Basketball Championship, this conference will focus on Leading for Innovation and Change.Continue Reading

Ph.D. Student Teaching Awards 2014

May 28, 2014

Winners of the 2014 Departmental Ph.D. Student Teaching Awards were announced on March 27, 2014 at the seventh annual “Ph.D. Student Night of Appreciation.”

Each of the five Ph.D. program concentrations gave a teaching award to a qualified student in their concentration. The 2014 winners are:

Accounting – Biyu Wu
Finance – Yihong Xiao
Management – Wonseok Choi
Marketing – Selcan Kara
Operations & Information Management (OPIM) – Gang Wang

The winner of the 2014 School of Business Outstanding Ph.D. Student Teaching award is:
Gang Wang.

Congratulations to all of the award recipients!

Fiserv Collaborates with UConn School of Business on Next-Generation Banking Apps

May 27, 2014

Brookfield, Wis. and Hartford, Conn. – Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, and the University of Connecticut School of Business, one of the top public business schools in the nation, today announced that Fiserv is participating in the university’s Financial Accelerator Program to help educate students and foster innovation. Continue Reading

Alumni Mentorship Program Forging Professional Relationships

May 21, 2014

Alumni Mentorship ProgramThe Alumni Mentorship Program, a collaboration between the School of Business Office of Alumni Relations and the Business Career Center, is actively creating opportunities for students to make professional relationships for a lifetime.

Connecting over 100 students one-on-one with alumni in their chosen field, the program spans four cities – Hartford, Conn., Stamford, Conn., New York, New York, and Boston, Mass. Mentoring activities include scheduled phone conversations, email exchanges, informational interviews, half/full day job shadowing, and networking meeting events. Over the 2013-14 academic year, mentors and mentees connected at two networking dinners that are planned again for this coming fall. Most recently, students connected with the alumni volunteers at “speed mentoring” events in Hartford and Stamford. See photos.

Launched in 2011, the program was designed to connect top School of Business students with alumni mentors in business who are committed to building a strong mentoring relationship in aiding students in launching their career. Discussions help the students to learn about opportunities that could broaden their education and knowledge of their chosen field, explore their strengths and weaknesses, and to learn how to communicate effectively in networking situations and build a solid network.

Alumni who are interested in volunteering or hearing more about this rewarding way to give back are encouraged to reach out to Fran Graham in the Alumni Relations Office at fran.graham@business.uconn.edu.

School of Business students who wish to apply for the program are asked to reach out to Kelly Kennedy in the Business Career Center at kelly.kennedy@business.uconn.edu.

Pictured: A student chats with Michael Golden ’84, strategic relationship manager for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

UConn Finance Professors Propose New Method to Estimate the Full Value-Effect of an Event

May 20, 2014

PPACA Passage EventStorrs, Conn. – Paul Borochin, assistant professor of finance at UConn School of Business, together with finance professor Joseph Golec, propose an event study method using stock and option prices to account for the degree of investor anticipation to more accurately measure the full value effect of an event.

Finance researchers and practitioners both use the event study method to measure whether the announcement of new information has a statistically significant effect on a firm’s stock market value. Paul Borochin and Joseph Golec, professors of finance at the University of Connecticut, recently proposed a method that uses stock and option prices to account for the degree of investor anticipation of an event to therefore more accurately measure the full value effect of that event.

“The purpose of our study is to introduce a general method of estimating the degree of investor anticipation applicable to all significant events that affect firms with traded options,” says Borochin. “We apply this more general method to estimate probabilities to a complex event: U.S. House of Representatives passage of the healthcare reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). We also examine a related event with different potential for investor anticipation: the subsequent 2012 Supreme Court ruling on PPACA constitutionality, which was potentially a greater surprise due to the Court’s higher opacity.”

Borochin and Golec essentially interpret the financial market as a betting market. “…we get the same information from options prices that we could obtain from looking at the Intrade [or other betting market] website,” says Borochin.

“Indeed, one reason that we select PPACA passage to illustrate our method is that it also had event securities traded on Intrade, the leading prediction market at the time,” he says. “We compare the Intrade-generated probabilities for the 2010 and 2012 events to those we generate from options and stock prices as a robustness check. Our financial market-generated probabilities have two advantages over prediction market-generated probabilities: (1) they are derived from assets with much larger dollar volumes of trades,1 and (2), they can be estimated for any event that impacts companies with traded stock options.”

Borochin and Golec believe that their method could be useful for ex ante as well as ex post public policy analysis, citing legislation that often contains offsetting provisions negotiated among different political factions—in this case, the PPACA fee (tax) on brand name pharmaceutical sales.

They measure the effects ex post, but the method could be used for ex ante analysis by government or industry officials. “For example, Congress could publicly release a bill and a vote date. Based on the option market reaction to the vote announcement, both government and industry officials could determine investors’ estimates of the net effect of the bill’s provisions,” says Borochin.

“Our method could also be used to better estimate public or private damages associated with an event,” he adds. “The Securities and Exchange Commission often estimates damages from corporate fraud and the Federal Trade Commission estimates damages from illegal business practices. As long as some of the firms involved have traded stock and options, our method can give a more accurate estimate of total damages.”

Many event studies do not adjust for the fact that their events are partly anticipated, and in many cases, the degree of anticipation is difficult to measure. For the PPACA House vote event Borochin and Golec consider, the adjustment triples the measured effect of the event on the market value of the affected firms.

“We believe that [our method] is likely to be more precise than alternative methods such as using public data on firm-specific attributes to estimate event probabilities, or using event securities from relatively small prediction markets, because our method employs high-volume assets whose prices may partly reflect nonpublic information. For an event with substantial public information available (House passage), we find our probability estimate and that of a prediction market are quite close. But for an event with little public information (Supreme Court constitutionality), the estimates differ considerably,” said Borochin.

The working paper, “Using Options to Measure the Full Value-Effect of an Event: Application to the Healthcare Reform Act,” can be downloaded here.

>>More about this research

1The daily value of PPACA contracts on Intrade averaged about $90,000 around the 2010 House vote event, while the average daily dollar value of stock ($277 million) and notional value of options ($397 million) traded for each company in our model totaled $674 million. The daily Intrade value was $35,000 during the 2012 Supreme Court event, while the average dollar stock and notional options trade value was $640 million.

Figure 1 –
The model-generated probability of PPACA passage compared to the Intrade-generated probability.
This figure plots the model-generated probability of PPACA passage by the U.S. House of Representatives, which is the probability implied by the stock and options prices of six hospital firms and six insurance firms. The Intrade-generated probability of PPACA passage is the price of an event security traded on the Intrade prediction market. Probabilities are shown for three weeks of trading before the event, the event day (March 22, 2010), and the day following the event.

UConn ups business on the syllabus

“In a lightning-fast economy, universities must constantly adapt to the shifting job market by adding and subtracting courses, instructors and professional degrees, all while maintaining budget. Over the past several years, The University of Connecticut in Stamford has been responding to the job market by expanding its business school programs and strengthening its ties with the business community…

UConn Business School Executive Director Jud Saviskas said there’s been a definitive growth in the college and the business community plays a big role in providing direct input into that growth. Three new business programs have emerged in just four years

Four years ago, the business school launched a master’s degree program in financial risk management. Last fall, it started an undergraduate financial management program.

The one-year graduate program in financial risk management, which is offered in both the Hartford and Stamford campuses, grew from 23 students total in 2010 to 86 students [in Fall 2012]. The enrollment number is expected to reach 140 this fall.”

The full article  from insurancenewsnet.com, written by Crystal Kang (May 19, 2014) may be found here.

 

A Visit from the FASB, CTCPA, and CT State Board of Accountancy

May 18, 2014

The online MS in Accounting Program held its four day in-residence class, Acct 5505, from May 19-22, welcoming 100 new students to UConn. One highlight from the week was a session called “Steering the Profession,” which included a presentation by Jeremie Richer of the FASB about the FASB’s role in the accounting profession. Joining Jeremie in the workshop were Mark Zampino from the CT Society of CPAs, and Sonia Worrell Asare and Stephanie Sheff from the CT State Board of Accountancy. They provided an overview of how their state-based organizations can help accountants in their work. In addition, they discussed the requirements for continuing professional education for Connecticut, pointing out that each state has its own requirements.

A big thank you to Jeremie, Mark, Sonia, and Stephanie for their time and expertise.